Through Hispanic direct marketer Carmen's Cupones y Consejos® program that targets highly acculturated Hispanic females - the decision maker in the 2.5 million Hispanic households in 7 states and in the top 12 US Hispanic markets, AOL has developed a bilingual, tri-fold brochure for the AOL Optimized PC. It's a special low cost offer for Hispanics who may think owning a computer and accessing the Internet is out of their reach. The offer includes the AOL Optimized PC, a printer, a 17-inch monitor, CD-ROM, stereo speakers, Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, modem and costs only about $300 with a one-year subscription to AOL's Latino 9.0 Internet Service for $23.90 a month.

Targeting the Hispanic community is a smart move as indicated by research into the group's media and internet usage, According to two surveys by Draft/Simmons and Media Audit, 72% of Hispanics say they always read direct mail, 66% respond to direct mail, and 39% say they want to receive more. The typical Hispanic household receives an average of 50 direct mail pieces per year, compared to 500 or so received by the general US population, so there is no mailbox "clutter" (yet). In addition, Hispanic consumers tend to be price conscious and 46% say they "always" or "sometimes" use coupons, particularly those with high acculturation, 75% of which reported using coupons compared to 56% of overall consumers in the US (NCH Marketing Services' Hispanic Coupon Survey, 2002).

Not that anyone would actually become bored with sex itself but it seems one can, in fact, become bored with sex in advertising. That is the finding of a recent study among young consumers in the UK. The study, conducted by the consultancy, HeadlightVision, claims youth have been so bombarded with sexual imagery that they no longer respond to it. It also found that subtle themes such as innocence and fun are the way marketers should go if they wish to maintain the attention of young consumers.

Started by a young Australian girl, Chloe Duffell, who was born in Australia but grew up in America, PULP Juice Bars, a health drink operation now owned by Signature Brand Limited has teamed with Virgin, who has taken a 20 percent stake in SBL's Pulp Health, to conquer the international health drink market. Virgin and SBL then created a new company, of which Virgin owns 80 percent, and are expanding the juice bar franchise across the Middle East, New Zealand, Australia, the UK, South Africa and America. Springwise calls it the next coming of Starbucks. Wouldn't we all rather grab a cup of something healthy in the morning rather than a calorically high Frappaccino? Of course not, but some people will.

There's a website called BizNetTravel that is written by several people including yours truly. Many of you know spelling on this website is far from perfect and some of you take some kind of sick pleasure in correcting many of the errors on this site. While there's no fault in that, you might want to visit BizNetTravel which is offering prizes to those who find spelling errors. Since I write for BizNetTravel, your bound to win. Check it out here.

For the Republican National Convention, Penn Plaza has been transformed into w mini Times Square. Huge billboards for FOX, Captain Morgan, Nissan, Infiniti and Foot Locker have taken over the Penn Center Subdistrict.

Commenting that viewers should, perhaps, be awarded medals for sitting through 14,000 commercials over 1,210 hours of Olympic programming, Stuart Elliot of the New York Times reviews some of the advertising highlights throughout the two week broadcast.

Among is favorites were BMW's farmer ad and many Chevrolet ads including the banned Corvette ad.

While we know there are no new ideas in advertising, reality producers have, apparently, not admitted that to themselves about the reality TV genre. Like some teen movie claiming orange the new pink, TNT will try to convince us their new reality show, He's A Lady is really a new take on reality TV. The show, what Queer Eye For The Straight Guy should have been, takes 11 big burly dudes, fools them into thinking they are competing for in a muscle-fest called All American Male and awards $250,000 to the man who can make himself look most like a woman. Judging this atrocity will be Morgan Fairchild and Detrot Piston John Salley among others.

The finale will imitate a beauty pageant that includes the all important question, "What, as a lady, have you learned about being a man?" Thanks to Adrants reader Charley Brough for the tip.

I've read Entertainment Weekly since the early lower-case "e" days and I can't recall a time where the magazine hadn't, citing its position as a family magazine, employed the practice of removing several letters from offending words spoken by interviewees. I have always thought that to be redundant and hypocritical since everyone knows what is being said anyway. In fact, it calls attention to it. So it was with great pleasure I read the quote, "Publishing is going to the shits, right?", spoken by author and gossip column fodder Abigail Vona at the end of an article in issue #781.

Did this slip by editors? Was this intentional. Has it happened before and I never noticed? Have we finally realized that people speak this way and there's no point in hiding it simply for vague notions of clinging to a puritanical culture that is long gone? Is this a big deal? Will anyone actually notice or care? Will there be a throng of letters written to the editor? No, it, issue #781, will just pass by as any other issue does garnering nothing other than the usual treatment any other issue receives. This is a good thing.